The Antibody Society

the official website of the antibody society

An international non-profit supporting antibody-related research and development.

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The Society thanks our retiring Directors

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The first annual meeting of The Antibody Society’s Board of Directors was held on December 2, 2007. Following their retirement on July 6, 2022, we are recognizing the outstanding contributions of four founding members: Dr. Andrew Bradbury, Prof. Dennis Burton,  Prof. Andreas Plückthun and Prof. Jamie Scott. In addition, we are acknowledging the strong contributions of Dr. Greg Adams who became a Director in 2013 and also retired on July 6th. Dr. Bradbury served as our first, and Prof. Scott as our second President. As stated by Dr. Bradbury: “the Society aimed to provide a forum and voice for the thousands of people working in this area and to help attract and encourage young students to all facets of the field”.  Amongst other things, this initially was done by ensuring the excellent scientific content of the Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics conference. Since that time, the Society has grown into a mature and world-renowned non-profit trade organization with ~ 2400 members from academia, government agencies and industry, and financially supported by over 40 companies ranging from the smallest biotech companies to the largest pharma firms.

The Society thanks Drs Bradbury and Adams and Profs Burton, Plückthun and Scott for their dedication and service, which has enabled the Society to grow and thrive. Each retiring member was given a special award for outstanding contributions to the Society, in the form of a piece of art which was specifically commissioned for them.

More information about The Antibody Society’s Board of Directors can be found here.

Thanks to all who participated in Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics Europe!

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Another very successful Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics Europe has concluded!

The Antibody Society thanks all the volunteers who helped at the booth:

 

  • Demelza Willemsz (Genmab)
  • Thomas Wesselink (Genmab)
  • Chalana Zilvold – van den Oever (Genmab)
  • Charlotte Berendsen (Genmab)
  • Lisa King (Amsterdam UMC)
  • Milon de Jong (Amsterdam UMC)

In addition to Thomas, Milon and Lisa, Kerry Chester (Board of Directors member), Janine Schuurman (Society Vice President) and Sally Ward (Society President) appear in the image above.

We hope to see you in Amsterdam in June 2023 for the next Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics Europe.

The 2022 Science Writing Competition is open!

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Attention Student & Post-doc members:
The 2022 Science Writing Competition is open!

Clear, concise communication is essential to make your science accessible. The Antibody Society is offering you a chance to grow this skill through a Science Writing Competition. For examples, view winning essays from the 2021 Science Writing Competition.

We invite you to submit an essay of 1200 – 1500 words on a topic related to antibody research. Feel free to use an eye-catching self-generated high-resolution graphic (jpg format) to help make your main point. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

Antibody engineering
Antibody therapeutics
Fc effector function and neutralization
Bispecific antibodies
Antibody-drug conjugates
Adaptive immune receptor repertoires

The winning essays are featured on The Antibody Society’s website and winners receive a $400 cash prize.

Two winners (1 student, 1 post-doc) will be selected by our panel of judges based on the originality, creativity, clarity, and structure of their essays.

Send your essay to membership@antibodysociety.org as a Word document. The first 30 submissions will be considered for the competition. Please include your contact details and whether you are a student or post-doc in your email.

Submission deadline: May 1, 2022
Essays should be written for a general reader. Guidance on effective scientific writing can be found here and here.

Entry is limited to The Antibody Society student and post-doc members. Additional information can be found here.

Not a member? Membership is free for students and post-docs – register here!

Season’s Greetings

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As the end of the year draws nears, we would like to thank our members, sponsors, partners, and many volunteers for their participation and contributions. With this help, we had a very productive year. In particular, we co-organized two Symposia in 2021, and launched our Career Shorts interviews and webinar series on Antibody Discovery & Development, Commercializing Antibody Therapeutics, and Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoires.

In case you missed either Symposia, recordings from our Emerging Immunotherapeutics for Ovarian Cancer Symposium (co-organized with the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance) and Emerging Cancer Therapies Leveraging Gamma-Delta Effector T cells Symposium (co-organized with LAVA Therapeutics) are available On Demand on our YouTube channel.

The Career Shorts interviews are also available on our YouTube channel. In this series, scientists and individuals working within the world of antibodies discuss the experiences that have shaped their careers. In sharing their experiences and advice, we aim to empower the next generation of scientists and leaders working in this field to make confident and informed decisions. Career Shorts is the creation of an exceptionally talented volunteer, Raquel Barroso Ferro.

We hope you will join us in our activities in 2022. In particular, The Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire (AIRR) Community of The Antibody Society will hold their 6th meeting during May 16-19, 2022. The “Exploring New Frontiers” meeting will be held in person in La Jolla, CA. The AIRR Community is a research-driven group that is organizing and coordinating stakeholders in the use of next-generation sequencing technologies to study antibody/B-cell and T-cell receptor repertoires.

Our volunteer experts in antibody engineering, Drs. Alicia Chenoweth and Silvia Crescioli, will apply their formidable knowledge of this area to create a searchable table of antibody therapeutics in late-stage clinical studies that will appear online in Q1 2022. Their very useful searchable table of antibody therapeutics that are approved or in review in the European Union or United States is already online.

In addition, we are planning a Symposium on Biopharmaceutical Informatics, tentatively scheduled for September 2022, and we will start a new Graduate Student/Post-doc Research Competition. When available, details for these new programs will be posted on our website and sent via email to members.

Our best wishes to you and yours for a wonderful holiday and a happy new year in 2022!

The Antibody Society announces the election of key Officers and Board of Directors Chair

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The Antibody Society, Inc., an international non-profit trade association focused on the advancement of antibody research and development, is pleased to announce the election of Prof. E. Sally Ward as President, Dr. Janine Schuurman as Vice President, and Prof. Paul Parren as Chair of the Board of Directors. They will assume these roles on January 1, 2022.

Prof. Ward, Dr. Schuurman and Prof. Parren bring substantial experience and expertise to their new roles. They each have made seminal contributions to the field of antibody discovery and development, and have critical experience with building successful external collaborations, partnerships, and alliances, which are essential to the Society’s future growth. Prof. Parren is succeeding Dr. James S. Huston who founded the Society in 2007 and served as Chair of the Board until his passing in 2020.

Prof. Ward served as the Society’s Vice President during 2020-2021. On her election as President, she said, “I am delighted to be given the opportunity to serve as President for The Antibody Society. It is a particular pleasure to be following in the footsteps of my friend and colleague, Dr. Paul Carter, who has made enormous contributions to the Society during his term. I am very enthusiastic about working with our newly elected Vice President, Dr. Janine Schuurman, on the Executive Committee. The antibody field continues to deliver an ever-expanding repertoire of novel classes of therapeutics to treat human disease, and it is great to be involved in this exciting area!”

Dr. Schuurman stated, “The Antibody Society plays a key role in representing individuals and organizations involved in the antibody research and development and it is a great pleasure to be elected as Vice President of this important association. I’m looking forward to elevating the awareness of antibody science and therapeutics, our beloved field of research, which is getting more and more interdisciplinary and interconnected. I’m also excited about this opportunity to work with Prof. Sally Ward and Dr. Janice Reichert as part of the Society’s Executive Committee.”

Prof. Parren remarked, “I am honored to be elected as the Chair of the Board of The Antibody Society and serve to support the business of antibody therapeutic development by stimulating the interchange of ideas and education as well as by working with opinion leaders and policy makers to forward this exciting field.”

Sally Ward, Ph.D., Professor in Molecular Immunology and Director of Translational Immunology in the Centre for Cancer Immunology at the University of Southampton.

Prof. Ward’s research takes an interdisciplinary approach involving a combination of antibody/protein engineering, fluorescence imaging and in vivo studies to inform the design of antibody-based therapies for autoimmunity and cancer. In 1996, her laboratory identified the Fc receptor, FcRn, as a global regulator of IgG levels, leading to half-life extension and FcRn antagonist (Abdeg) technologies. These technologies have been licensed to biopharma, resulting in engineered, antibody-based therapeutics that are approved or are pending approval. Recent work in her laboratory has also described the generation of antibody-drug conjugates with engineered variable domains that have improved lysosomal delivery behavior.

Janine Schuurman, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Head Antibody Research & Technology, Genmab

Dr. Schuurman is an expert in antibody biology and translational research. Following her passion to develop innovative antibody therapeutics, Dr. Schuurman joined Genmab in 2000. She currently heads the Research & Technology division, focusing on antibody biology research, the creation of novel antibody formats and their translation to antibody therapeutics. She is a co-inventor multiple antibody technology platforms including DuoBody®, HexaBody® and HexElect® technologies that enable the generation of bispecific and effector-function enhanced antibodies. These technologies are being applied to antibody therapeutics discovery programs at Genmab, as well as many leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies located worldwide. In addition, she is a co-inventor of several antibody therapeutic products in various stages of development and approved treatment options for patients.

Paul Parren, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Head of R&D, Lava Therapeutics; Professor of Molecular Immunology at the Leiden University Medical Center

Prof. Parren is dedicated to translating antibody biology and immunotherapy knowledge into innovative therapeutics and technologies. He has a passion for investigating and understanding structure-function relationships and their application in antibody drug discovery and development. He was a postdoc and faculty member at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. From 2002-2017, he served in the position Scientific Director heading Genmab’s preclinical R&D, where he developed the scientific concepts and translation of the DuoBody® and HexaBody® technologies. He is an inventor of five marketed therapeutic antibodies, including canonical human antibodies, an antibody-drug conjugate and a bispecific antibody, approved for the treatment of various cancers and autoimmune inflammatory diseases. He is a tenured Professor of Molecular Immunology at the Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. He heads R&D at LAVA Therapeutics since 2018. Under his leadership, LAVA grew to a clinical stage biotechnology company with a successful initial public offering and Nasdaq listing in the US in March of 2021. He also provides drug development, patent, and investment advice as an independent consultant to (start-up) biotech and pharma and contributes to the program of leading scientific conferences in the antibody field.

About The Antibody Society

The Antibody Society, Inc. is an international non-profit trade association representing individuals and organizations involved in antibody research and development. The Society is an authoritative source of information about antibody therapeutics development, which is disseminated via our website, presentations, and publications. In addition, the Society organizes conferences and webinars on antibody research and development and related topics. The Society also serves as the home for the Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire Community, which focuses on developing standards and protocols for curating, analyzing and sharing antibody B and T cell receptors. As a business association, the Society can engage with government and international agencies such as the World Health Organization to discuss topics that are important to the antibody community, such as international naming conventions.